Windows 10 Build 10009 Marks Arrival Of ‘Project Spartan’ Web Browser

It looks like Microsoft's up-and-coming Web browser Spartan could be soon hitting our Windows 10 preview builds. Chinese website ITHome managed to get its hands on the 10009 build, which is said to have been compiled in late January -- mere days after the rest of us got the massive 9926 build.

We're not too what else build 10009 is going to bring to the table, but honestly, it could only add the Spartan browser and still be considered a massive update.

It's not clear at this point if this version of Spartan has proper Cortana support, but we can see that it has "Reading Mode", which allows you to read any online article like a book. We can also glean from the screenshots that Microsoft is integrating some of the modern aesthetic into the browser's settings menu, making it look like the new Settings screen.

One of the biggest features of Spartan is its all-new EdgeHTML engine. Last month, I pit that engine against its leading competitors, Blink and Gecko, and it performed well. It didn't surpass either of those aforementioned engines, but it proved vastly superior to the old Trident engine.

With build 9926, we got a lot more than we were expecting, including the beginning of an overall new look for system icons. In that build, we saw the folder icons totally revamped, and in the screenshot above (if you squint hard enough), you'll be able to see that the Recycle Bin got some polish in 10009. That's surely not going to be the only icon, so it'll be interesting to see what other ones got some love since 9926.

It's hard to say when we'll be given the next preview build, but it certainly won't be 10009. Why that's important is that by the time we get our next build, it could have even more enhancements not seen in these shots.

While it's a minor detail, I'd like to point out one other significant part of this 10009 build: its version number. Since Windows 95, which stopped receiving updates at build 950, Microsoft's continued to build on those numbers with each subsequent release and beta / preview version. Up to this point, Windows builds are: 98 (2222), XP (2600), Vista (6002), 7 (7601), and 8 (9200). The first Windows 10 preview build we received was versioned 9841, and now, we see 10009. It's been a long journey to 10K.